Special Projects

Kettle’s Yard develops a number of landmark projects throughout the year in partnership with other organisations and funders. Please see examples of some of our projects below.

ART NOW

Between September 2021 – January 2023 Kettle’s Yard collaborated with students from Castle School, an inclusive school supporting SEND (Special Educational Needs and Disabilities) pupils in Cambridge and artist-in-residence Georgia Akbar to deliver ART NOW, an innovative creative project.

ART NOW aimed to support children to take the lead in their own creative activities, working collaboratively to develop tangible and intangible legacies for their school.

In 2022 Georgia Akbar was selected by the students as the ART NOW artist in residence. She collaborated with students across the school to co-create artwork and develop a legacy of embedded co-production across the school. During the project students took part in experimental and creative workshops alongside Akbar and visited the Kettle’s Yard House for inspiration and ideas. The final artwork was particularly inspired by the light and shadows and the careful installation of windows at Kettle’s Yard. It invited audiences to immerse themselves, explore, discover and connect.

This project was generously supported by the Ragdoll Foundation.

Ready or Not?

Kettle’s Yard Learning & Community team has been working in partnership with researchers from the University of Cambridge and Birmingham to explore how creativity can support children and their families in getting ready to start school. This work has resulted in a new resource for parents and nursery teachers full of creative ideas and activities to spark conversations, inspired by art collections.

Artist Rachel McGivern led a series of creative workshops with families from the Red Hen Project in North Cambridge and also those attending a special Studio Sunday. The starting point for each activity was an object from the Kettle’s Yard collection which initiated a conversation about:

planning a new journey
gathering and sorting objects
making friends

These conversations were reinforced by a fun and creative activity such as drawing a map, planning a make-believe tea party and gathering and displaying natural objects. These workshops have informed a new set of resources and suggested activities for parents, carers and nursery teachers to support their children’s resilience for starting school.

You can download the resources here:

These resources will support the research of the Ready or Not? study led by teams at the Centre for Family Research at the University of Cambridge and the School of Psychology at the University of Birmingham.

How we got through: Lockdown Letters with Hannah Jane Walker

Poet Hannah Jane Walker invited people of all ages and from across the UK, to write a letter to her reflecting on their personal experiences of lockdown life.

Hannah Jane Walker read and collated the many letters we received to create a new poem.

You can read the finished poem here or listen to Hannah-Jane Walker read the poem and reflect upon the letters on the Collecting Covid resource as the Cambridge University Library, A City’s Pandemic.

This project was supported by Children’s Art Week, an annual event run by Engage, the National Association for Gallery Education and supported in 2020 by Arts Council England, Creative Scotland, Arts Council of Wales, The D’Oyly Carte Charitable Trust and Garfield Weston Foundation.

Art to Go

Art To Go is a video series from Kettle’s Yard bringing easy, creative workshops for all ages and abilities to your own home. We are fortunate to work with incredible artists and an amazing learning team whose expertise and practices offer new and exciting ways to explore different subject matters at Kettle’s Yard.

Find out more here.

Watch the videos here.

Casson & Friends

In July 2018, Casson & Friends were in residence at Kettle’s Yard for two weeks, working with Mayfield Primary School, local Cambridge residents and visitors to our Antony Gormley SUBJECT exhibition to create several new performances. They were inspired by visitors reactions to SUBJECT.

North Cambridge Academy Poster Competition

Before the opening of the new Kettle’s Yard in February 2018, we worked with North Cambridge Academy to design posters advertising the opening. The winner was Niamh, with a special commendation for drawing that went to Kerryn & two worthy runner ups in Liana & Haris. The posters were displayed in the Kettle’s Yard window and around the city.

Motion Tracks at North Cambridge Academy

Kettle’s Yard is delighted to announce that artist Johann Arens has been selected to work with us at North Cambridge Academy to create public artworks in their new school building. Students and teachers from North Cambridge Academy selected Johann Arens to be in residence from March – December 2016. He will create artworks for the new school building, taking inspiration from the creativity of the students and their aspirations for learning and their community. Read more.

North Cambridge Academy Dance Project

In Summer 2015 Kettle’s Yard worked with GCSE dance students at North Cambridge Academy to choreograph dance pieces in response to the exhibition Henri Gaudier-Brzeska New Rhythms: Art, Dance and Movement 1911-1915. Inspired by Gaudier-Brzeska’s depictions of dance, the group spent 10 weeks developing pieces with dance artist Filipa Pereira-Stubbs which they performed as part of Castle Hill Open Day

Max Reinhardt Literacy Award

Kettle’s Yard was one three lucky recipients of the inaugural Max Reinhardt Literacy Award, which has seen the Grove Primary School in Kings Hedges and Kettles Yard work with writer Claire Collison to respond to the collection. Children from year 3 worked with the writer and gallery for 6 weeks to develop their creative writing skills. A new learning resource inspired by the project entitled ‘Making Conversations’ has been developed and can be downloaded for free here.

Archaeology Project

Working in partnership with Arbury Primary and Oxford Archaeology East we devised a cross-curricular arts and archaeology project that utilised the strongest resources from both organisations. The project enabled 50 children to engage with the heritage and history of their local area through archaeological practice and creative activity. The project involved visits to archaeological sites in North Cambridge, visits and workshops at Kettle’s Yard, an archaeological dig on the school grounds and practical family workshops at Castle Hill Open Day 2014. Lasting legacies for the school included a collaborative artwork inspired by the archaeological dig and the Kettle’s Yard collection made by all pupils, artefacts found from the dig and two resource boxes to be used as part of the history curricula at the school. See the project report in the left side bar.

SpaceMakers

SpaceMakers was a two-year project using creativity and contemporary arts to help pupils from two Cambridgeshire schools to engage with architecture and the built environment, to become ‘SpaceMakers’. Devised and overseen by Kettle’s Yard’s Learning Team, it was primarily delivered by two professional artists working closely with two lead teachers. Please read the evaluation report in the left side bar.